Abstract

Collisional plasmas typically have mean-free-path still much greater than the Debye length, so the sheath is mostly collisionless. Once the plasma density,temperature, and flow are specified at the sheath entrance, the profile variation of electron and ion density, temperature,flow speed, and conductive heat fluxes inside the sheath is set by collisionless dynamics, and can be predicted by an analytical kinetic model distribution. These predictions are contrasted here with direct kinetic simulations, showing good agreement.

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, and Office of Advanced Scientific Computing, under the auspices of the National Nuclear Security Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy by Los Alamos National Laboratory, operated by Los Alamos National Security LLC under contract DE-AC52-06NA25396.